Jeppe Sandholt

In this illustrated series Ørn (in English: “Eagle”) we meet Thor, who lives with his mother and father on a farm. Thor is used to his father making all the decisions at home, and at school, he often lets others decide things for him. As a result, he becomes an easy target for bullying. One day, Thor and his father go out into the forest. They do this often. But this time, they shoot an adult eagle. Thor hears a faint sound and finds a newly hatched eaglet, now orphaned. The eaglet becomes a sort of catalyst for major changes in Thor’s life. Now, he’s the one responsible for another being, and he’s the one making the decisions. But it turns out to be much harder than Thor expects to control a wild animal and treat it as an almost equal little brother. 

Thor struggles with the task and searches for his own path beyond his father’s narrow view of what it means to be a real man. Thor wants something different than the usual pre-determined path. He fights to have an eagle as his brother and friend. Thor’s mother has long since noticed that a bird of prey resides in the family, but Thor’s father only realises it in the end – when things turn fatal and impossible to navigate without being discovered by the community, which nevertheless supports the small family and lawfully puts them in their place. Freedom always comes at a price.  

With its 842 pages, Ørn is likely the longest illustrated series in Denmark, but the relatively little text makes the book easy to read, without sacrificing the dramatic and quite complex storyline. It is undoubtedly an impressive work that, in its simple and at times rather absurd form, speaks directly to the reader. With a few, carefully chosen colours, a world is created where nothing is black and white anymore, but rather anchored in an elegant and expansive space of other realities – where the old world has long since turned into a new one. 

Jeppe Sandholt has written and illustrated a tribute to imagination in all its complex variations. It is humorous, touching, and strikingly original. When you have an eagle as your confidant, you’re never alone. A modern fable cast into a fragmented, pixelated, and nearly (de)constructed world, where the animal still helps us understand ourselves and one another. The animal goes – or flies – its own way, just like Jeppe Sandholt does himself. In doing so, he sticks to precise storytelling and his own determination, with a visionary agenda: never to forget the untamed in the midst of the streamlined.     

Jeppe Sandholt (born in 1982) is an animator and illustrator. Ørn marks his debut as both author and illustrator. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from The Animation Workshop in Viborg in 2008.